Schmidt Steps Back by Louis Begley Read Free Book Online

the mop of auburn hair, the suntanned face, and the expression of perpetual mockery standing out amid the phalanx of self-important men in navy-blue suits, white shirts, and black neckties, the uniform of W & K male partners for such occasions. They had chatted briefly. No, Alice hadn’t made it to New York, her mother was ailing. But he and Alice were doing well. Exceedingly well, was what he said in fact. Why don’t Schmidtie and Mary come to Paris? We’ll have a nice dinner
à quatre
. Having put the question, Tim laughed, Ha! Ha! Ha! the startlingly ebullient coda to most of his pronouncements. Really happy to see you, ha! ha! ha! It took all night to get that memo ready, but here it is, ha! ha! ha! Joe Jones called to say he’s sending a new transaction our way, ha! ha! ha! No, Alice and I can’t make it to your dinner, we’re dining with the president of Yale ha! ha! ha! Before they had progressed past “come to Paris … ha! ha! ha!” Lew Brenner, the New York senior partner with whom Tim had been working most closely in recent years, sidled over, and he began exchanging with Tim gossip about clients and deals that meant nothing to Schmidt. How soon after that did Tim retire? A year? Perhaps a year and a half? It would have been just before Mary’s first operation. Schmidt had turned sixty and had hastily arranged to retire from the firm. He wanted tobe with her during the time that she had left, time that they soon realized would be short.
    But nothing, absolutely nothing, had foreshadowed Tim’s decision. He was a long way from sixty, the earliest age at which the firm’s plan permitted partners to retire. He was popular and hardworking. Nobody had wanted him to leave. The only explanation Jack DeForrest gave at firm lunch when he described the terms of Tim’s payout was that young Verplanck wanted to write a book, whereupon one of the newly made partners raised his hand and asked why any payout was appropriate for a partner in good health who chooses to retire at fifty. DeForrest browbeat him into silence. Having made the deal, he wasn’t about to have to justify it to a whippersnapper. Meanwhile a good half of the table tittered about how Verplanck had always had too much money for his own good. Why in the world would he want to work? Instant selective amnesia: by the time dessert was served the memory of the record-breaking billable hours that Tim had regularly racked up as an associate, and the volume of business he had handled as a partner, had been forgotten completely. The wolf pack could remember only his money and chic. Schmidt got back to his office in a foul mood and was about to dial DeForrest’s number and ask that potentate for the real story when he realized he couldn’t do it. The grudge he bore his erstwhile best friend at the firm was too deep; he wouldn’t give DeForrest the satisfaction of knowing that Schmidt’s cherished protégé had chosen to keep him in the dark. He put down the receiver. For the same reason, because it stung him to have had no news, no indication that there was a health problem, four years later he didn’t ask DeForrest what Tim had died of, and for no reason at all, except that, having just become the head of MikeMansour’s Life Centers, he was swamped with work, it didn’t occur to him to put the question to Lew Brenner. Instead, he wrote to Alice Verplanck, pouring out all his feelings of sadness and friendship. He didn’t doubt she knew, he wrote, that Tim had been his favorite associate, the young lawyer he had admired more than any he had worked with during his long career. As he happened to be going on business to Eastern and Central Europe, and would pass through Paris on his way home, would she allow him to call on her? Her answer, sent by some sort of European express mail, caught him just before his departure. It contained her telephone number, different from the one listed in the office directory, and assurances that she would be happy to